Meatball Cookies

     For Easter we made "meatball cookies" as Christine's family likes to call them. No they aren't made of meatballs and they aren't shaped like meatballs either. The recipe is calls for a basic Italian cookie and this is where meatball comes in. Like myself, her family are equal opportunity offenders. The actual name for these cookies should be birds' nest cookies.
     The topping is where you need to start because the coconut needs time to dry out. For this step all you need is coconut and green food coloring. Mix the two together and spread out on some aluminum foil until dry. The green coconut represents the nest part of the birds' nest. Jelly beans that have been cut in half lengthwise go on top to represent the eggs. We found some speckled jelly beans that looked very similar to actual birds' eggs. We used three jelly bean halves per cookie which gives a nice bit of sweetness to each bite.
     To keep the egg filled nest on top of the cookie, we made butter cream frosting from scratch. I didn't realized how few ingredients go into butter cream frosting but the majority of it is confectioners' sugar. Milk, vanilla, and butter are mixed in until it starts to firm up enough to spread. Spreading the frosting on each little cookie is the most time consuming part of the whole process.
     The base for the nest and eggs is a basic Italian cookie made up of flour, sugar, vanilla, baking soda, and butter. Mix these until combined enough to spoon onto cookie sheets. You have to watch these bake because they can burn very easily. They should only be about the size of a half dollar when they are done.
Rating: Fair - I felt that they needed something more because the cookie was too basic. Everyone seemed to enjoy them though